Kino

[HerrSchreck]

Warning Shadows on preorder on Amazon.com

Dr Mabuse Der Speiler special ed
with artwork finally up (FUCKING COOL!)

and Asphalt

[justeleblanc]

Awesome, that's such a bad-ass cover too!

Looking at it makes me think that the innitial sketches for Burton's BATMAN RETURNS's penguin was meant to pay homage a bit to one of Mabuse's costumes (as seen in this poster recreation). It wouldn't surprise me knowing the other stylistic choices of Burton, but then who knows.

But man, I love that cover!!

[sevenarts]

has anybody seen Kino's new Haneke discs yet? what's the word on those?

[Gregory]

Not surprisingly, they're ports of the French Haneke box set, so you get all the by-products typical of an uncoverted PAL-NTSC transfer. Once again, they seem to serve the market demographic that doesn't care about things like ghosting and leave the rest of us in R1 to buy (or wait for) better quality releases from elsewhere in the world. This kind of thing saves them money in the short-term but I think their sales would be much higher if the quality-price ratio wasn't so consistently low.

[sevenarts]

ahhh that's what i figured, crap. will wait for the (likely?) Artificial Eye release then.

[denti alligator]

Not surprisingly, they're ports of the French Haneke box set, so you get all the by-products typical of an uncoverted PAL-NTSC transfer. Once again, they seem to serve the market demographic that doesn't care about things like ghosting and leave the rest of us in R1 to buy (or wait for) better quality releases from elsewhere in the world. This kind of thing saves them money in the short-term but I think their sales would be much higher if the quality-price ratio wasn't so consistently low.

I'm glad I went for the French set, then. It's also cheaper.

[zedz]

ahhh that's what i figured, crap. will wait for the (likely?) Artificial Eye release then.

AE have already released Funny Games, and last I looked it was a really awful transfer, so there's probably no point hanging out for that one, anyway. (Australian ports may be forthcoming - devlinn?)

[sevenarts]

ahhh that's what i figured, crap. will wait for the (likely?) Artificial Eye release then.

AE have already released Funny Games, and last I looked it was a really awful transfer, so there's probably no point hanging out for that one, anyway. (Australian ports may be forthcoming - devlinn?)

actually, it was Tartan who put out Funny Games, and they're reissuing it at the end of this month with (apparently) a new transfer. so here's hoping. and still hoping that AE does get to the other 2 films, since they have released some Haneke.

[denti alligator]

ahhh that's what i figured, crap. will wait for the (likely?) Artificial Eye release then.

AE have already released Funny Games, and last I looked it was a really awful transfer, so there's probably no point hanging out for that one, anyway. (Australian ports may be forthcoming - devlinn?)

actually, it was Tartan who put out Funny Games, and they're reissuing it at the end of this month with (apparently) a new transfer. so here's hoping. and still hoping that AE does get to the other 2 films, since they have released some Haneke.

Is Kino's new Funny Games also a PAL-to-NTSC mess?

[justeleblanc]

has anybody seen Kino's new Haneke discs yet? what's the word on those?

I might be the only person on this forum who still can't tell if a film is ghosting or not. So if you can't tell, the discs are great... if you can tell then you should buy the R2 versions.

[sevenarts]

AE have already released Funny Games, and last I looked it was a really awful transfer, so there's probably no point hanging out for that one, anyway. (Australian ports may be forthcoming - devlinn?)

actually, it was Tartan who put out Funny Games, and they're reissuing it at the end of this month with (apparently) a new transfer. so here's hoping. and still hoping that AE does get to the other 2 films, since they have released some Haneke.

Is Kino's new Funny Games also a PAL-to-NTSC mess?

according to Gregory about 5 posts up, yes.

[HerrSchreck]

Pal to NTSC unpreconverted can be a mess in some cases with a good transfer, in others it's virtually indetectable and the hangup is purely psychologically techhead. See Gary's reviews of the new FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN & WARHOL DRAC for him proclaiming unpreconverted pal-ntsc as "stunning": From the beev:

ADDITION: - Tartan - PAL - June 2006 - Newly restored and remastered in association with Paul Morrissey, the Tartan version looks stunning. No visible artefacts and a beautifully balanced colour palette. The only negative comment is, that it is a NTSC to PAL, and has ghosting issues.

The first two sentences are based on what the film looks like on the dvd. The last is probably psychologically based owiing to stopping thefilm and advancing frame by frame and acquiring knowledge he wouldnt have other wise know based on watching the film, which is what we're here for.

It depends on the source element, the type of tv you have, and above all the skill of company encoding the transfer to disc. Interlaced transfers can be beautiful, improperly converted pal-ntsc can be beautiful (particularly when the ratio of frames with 2 frames vs single frame frames is low), purely progressive transfers can look terrible. Setting rules saying "if its nonpreconverted its automatic mess" is juvenile and tech obsessed.

Watch Kino's THE MAN WHO LAUGHS and announce this as anything but a completely gorgeous disc, and Id say you're nuts. A Cineteca Bologna/LImagine Ritrovate restoration of an obscure masterpiece unavailable anywhere else, and getting hung up on otherwise undetectable issues is nutty. See the compares for NOSFERATU, CABINET CALIGARI for unpreconverted masters used by Kino squashing in vid quality the source/Pal region 2 editions of the same digital tapes. Use your eyes on a case by case basis, and you'll serve your collections well. Some Kinos are indeed disgusting on the other hand. COME AND SEE, AGONIYA, ASHIK KERIB, to name a few. You can go blind watching these things. Keep your mind & eyes open.

[tryavna]

Pal to NTSC unpreconverted can be a mess in some cases with a good transfer, in others it's virtually indetectable and the hangup is purely psychologically techhead. See Gary's reviews of the new FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN & WARHOL DRAC for him proclaiming unpreconverted pal-ntsc as "stunning": From the beev:

ADDITION: - Tartan - PAL - June 2006 - Newly restored and remastered in association with Paul Morrissey, the Tartan version looks stunning. No visible artefacts and a beautifully balanced colour palette. The only negative comment is, that it is a NTSC to PAL, and has ghosting issues.

The first two sentences are based on what the film looks like on the dvd. The last is probably psychologically based owiing to stopping thefilm and advancing frame by frame and acquiring knowledge he wouldnt have other wise know based on watching the film, which is what we're here for.

It depends on the source element, the type of tv you have, and above all the skill of company encoding the transfer to disc. Interlaced transfers can be beautiful, improperly converted pal-ntsc can be beautiful (particularly when the ratio of frames with 2 frames vs single frame frames is low), purely progressive transfers can look terrible. Setting rules saying "if its nonpreconverted its automatic mess" is juvenile and tech obsessed.

Watch Kino's THE MAN WHO LAUGHS and announce this as anything but a completely gorgeous disc, and Id say you're nuts. A Cineteca Bologna/LImagine Ritrovate restoration of an obscure masterpiece unavailable anywhere else, and getting hung up on otherwise undetectable issues is nutty. See the compares for NOSFERATU, CABINET CALIGARI for unpreconverted masters used by Kino squashing in vid quality the source/Pal region 2 editions of the same digital tapes. Use your eyes on a case by case basis, and you'll serve your collections well. Some Kinos are indeed disgusting on the other hand. COME AND SEE, AGONIYA, ASHIK KERIB, to name a few. You can go blind watching these things. Keep your mind & eyes open.

With time, I've come to agree with Schreck's position, as stated here. There are indeed some fine PAL->NTSC conversions in R1-land. That's one of the reasons that I've always been a fan of Milestone; with a few horrendous exceptions (like Phantom of the Opera), their ports are usually pretty decent. For instance, [/b]The Chess Player is a PAL->NTSC port, but I have difficulty detecting it on a tube tv.

That being said, "ghosting" is one of those factors that you begin to notice more and more once you learn that it exists and how to detect it. In fact, if I'm not careful, I have a tendency to look for it actively on certain labels (like Kino, etc.). And that's pretty obsessive-compulsive!

[denti alligator]

actually, it was Tartan who put out Funny Games, and they're reissuing it at the end of this month with (apparently) a new transfer. so here's hoping. and still hoping that AE does get to the other 2 films, since they have released some Haneke.

Is Kino's new Funny Games also a PAL-to-NTSC mess?

according to Gregory about 5 posts up, yes.

Gregory only mentions the films in the French box. Funny Games was not one of these, which is why I ask. I thought maybe the source material might be different.

[Gregory]

Schreck: I didn't mean to suggest that all PAL-NTSC transfers look equally bad on all displays. They often look bad on my display. Not knowing how bad they'll turn out to be makes me leery of buying such releases. The very fact that one can never be 100% sure how a particular release of this kind willl look on one's own display seems to argue against the practice, as a rule, even though there are of course other factors in determining how good the transfer is.

Denti: I haven't seen the Kino Funny Games yet and I'm not sure whether or not I should buy it. Svet Atanasov at DVDTalk reports a good dose of ghosting on it. From past experience I don't automatically trust this, although it is consistent with what they did with their other Haneke DVDs. Atanasov also took No Shame to task for releasing a PAL converted Story of a Love Affair. While Digitally Obsessed said the same thing, other reviewers like Beaver and Savant said the opposite, that No Shame had abandoned the practice that marred some of their other early releases. It wasn't just a matter of not being able to detect ghosting, either; the DVD plays at the correct runtime with no evidence of PAL speedup. When I politely asked Svet to clarify the issue for me, he sort of blew up at me (at least he seemed pretty huffy and used lots of exclamation points). He wouldn't say anything about the lack of a shortened runtime, and would only say that the other reviews were wrong, he was right, and that I was free to believe whatever I wanted.
With Kino's Funny Games, in all likelihood accurately, he reported that it is a port of the French release, although both he and the Digitally Obsessed reviewer agree that it's a big improvement over the earlier Fox Lorber release. Not knowing how it will look on my equipment I've been waiting to decide what to do. Sorry I couldn't be more help.

[tryavna]

When I politely asked Svet to clarify the issue for me, he sort of blew up at me (at least he seemed pretty huffy and used lots of exclamation points). He wouldn't say anything about the lack of a shortened runtime, and would only say that the other reviews were wrong, he was right, and that I was free to believe whatever I wanted.

Gregory, so you've had a run-in with Svet now, too? I post over there (under a different username), and he does have a tendency to get a bit huffy when you question him on something like that. Actually, several of the reviewers over there have the same problem, which is a bit of a shame because most of them have an obvious and genuine love for film and for the DVD medium. I've just never understood why some of them get so defensive. That's one of the reasons I tend to support Savant even when I disagree with him. He's always friendly and helpful.

[pro-bassoonist]

Schreck: I didn't mean to suggest that all PAL-NTSC transfers look equally bad on all displays. They often look bad on my display. Not knowing how bad they'll turn out to be makes me leery of buying such releases. The very fact that one can never be 100% sure how a particular release of this kind willl look on one's own display seems to argue against the practice, as a rule, even though there are of course other factors in determining how good the transfer is.

Denti: I haven't seen the Kino Funny Games yet and I'm not sure whether or not I should buy it. Svet Atanasov at DVDTalk reports a good dose of ghosting on it. From past experience I don't automatically trust this, although it is consistent with what they did with their other Haneke DVDs. Atanasov also took No Shame to task for releasing a PAL converted Story of a Love Affair. While Digitally Obsessed said the same thing, other reviewers like Beaver and Savant said the opposite, that No Shame had abandoned the practice that marred some of their other early releases. It wasn't just a matter of not being able to detect ghosting, either; the DVD plays at the correct runtime with no evidence of PAL speedup. When I politely asked Svet to clarify the issue for me, he sort of blew up at me (at least he seemed pretty huffy and used lots of exclamation points). He wouldn't say anything about the lack of a shortened runtime, and would only say that the other reviews were wrong, he was right, and that I was free to believe whatever I wanted.
With Kino's Funny Games, in all likelihood accurately, he reported that it is a port of the French release, although both he and the Digitally Obsessed reviewer agree that it's a big improvement over the earlier Fox Lorber release. Not knowing how it will look on my equipment I've been waiting to decide what to do. Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Dear Gregory:

It was brought to my attention by a good friend at the Criterion forum that my name is being mentioned in this thread and I decided to reply to your comments:

The remark that I made awhile ago regarding NoShame's release of Story of a Love Affair and its sourcing was meant to inform you that there was a bit of confusion (I believe) in the manner in which you read DVDBEAVER's review (for a final confirmation on it you should probably contact Gary as I think it is unfair that I deconstruct his words). Why? You state that DVDBEAVER's review indicates that Story of a Love Affair is not an improperly PAL-sourced DVD and was part of NoShame's improved efforts to properly master their DVDs (which happened a bit later, after my dealings with them). Here's a quote from DVDBEAVER's review which you group together with Savant's “positiveâ€

[HerrSchreck]

LANGLOIS doc-- excellent. Just missed catching this at Film Forum.

Sometimes these guys point out otherwise undetectable issues like NTSC use of a PAL beta source (even when encoded with such excellence that the release exceeds the very PAL originators of the tape) because it gives them, guys at home in their kitchen on a laptop with a baby crying and a wife bitching to stop spending so much unprofitable time on the computer as its not making any money and theres stuff to be done around the house, a reason to scold large companies in New York. Then you get kids & newbies anxious to show they're down w the scene and they pick it up & start condemning shit off the cuff coming on with pal-ntsc transfer stuff they barely know what they're talking about. Being a gadfly can be fun, especially when you've latched onto what seems to be a legitimate issue exposing cheapness. In some cases Kino is absolutely being cheap and producing discs that never inna million years would I believe Krim or Wood themselves would pay money for. In other cases, especially silents, Kino gets around the PAL issue with general skill imagewise, even exceeding R2 where the tapes came from... though METROPOLIS was a big fuckup. I watch on both hi def CRT and flat LCD's, and my girlfriends JVC Iart tube tv, and it really takes freeframe stepping to confirm it. Certainly nothing as blatantly awful as Image's BERLIN, or Milestone's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (which I bought because Gary gave it a good review, for which I'll never frigging understand, I feel like sending him a bill... if Kino had released that disc it would have been vitriol for days).

Itching for WARNING SHADOWS, baby. Interested too to see if ASPHALT is going to look as hazy as MOC in places, with the same analog halo effect in other spots, particuarlu intertitles, though I'm sure since Kino'll be making their own theatrical print they'll be mimicing the old days & making American title cards whcih will annoyingly do away with the old intertitles. I love MoC for that devotion to purity.

[Gregory]

Svet:
Discussion of No Shame's Story of a Love Affair release has become a tangent here, but I want to try and quickly resolve a couple of things and then put this to rest with no hard feelings. Most of what you discussed in your response on the previous page can be explained by the fact that Gary seems to have gone back and corrected his review. The wording now indeed indicates that it is PAL-NTSC. I believe this change resulted from my contacting him a while back on the Beaver listserv to double-check his statement. I was in the process of deciding whether or not to buy the DVD and was trying to adjudicate between the conflicting assertions over this admittedly trivial matter. Not to belabor the point, but this is done by looking at the evidence, such as the runtime issue (which I didn't get just from IMDB as you speculated) and I wasn't able to make this happen in our discussion at DVDTalk. Anyway, Gary said that he had not seen any ghosting but that he would go back and check the disc, and he apparently did. That is why the Beaver review no longer contains what I cited before.
I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your response but it seemed to me a bit defensive, officious, as I said before, huffy. This had partly to do with the tendency to merely re-assert what you had already stated in your review rather than addressing the points I had raised (e.g. runtime issue, possible sources of confusion) but also with the use of many question marks. I probably misinterpreted this because that style of punctuation is less common on this forum and liable to be interpreted as "shouting." Sorry if this was a bad-faith assumption on my part.

[pro-bassoonist]

Svet:
Discussion of No Shame's Story of a Love Affair release has become a tangent here, but I want to try and quickly resolve a couple of things and then put this to rest with no hard feelings. Most of what you discussed in your response on the previous page can be explained by the fact that Gary seems to have gone back and corrected his review. The wording now indeed indicates that it is PAL-NTSC.

Dear Gregory:

If this is indeed the case then you and I are clearly on solid grounds so to speak. I do not think that there is any confusion anymore.

On a side note, part of my passionate response to you at DVDTALK was due to the fact that I had some very harsh words for NoShame in the very beginning when they released The Railroad Man (to make a long story short I am a very big Germi fan and was utterly upset by their 2DVD set, as you well know the disc is plagued by heavy “ghostingâ€

[htdm]

My vote for the criterionforum.org Forum peace prize goes to Gregory.

[dx23]

Davisdvd.com is reporting that Kino is going to release Dr. Mabuse, The Gamble on July 18th. More info on the specs here:
http://www.davisdvd.com/news/news.html

[Tribe]

Does anyone have any idea how much of an improvement, if any, the Kino Mabuse will be over the existing Image Entertainment release?

Tribe

[FilmFanSea]

Does anyone have any idea how much of an improvement, if any, the Kino Mabuse will be over the existing Image Entertainment release?

The Kino will be a direct port of the Transit Films release from Germany (which also served as the source for the 2004 Eureka release), though I suspect it will suffer from PAL-to-NTSC transfer issues (though I could be wrong--the listed running time of 270 minutes is identical).

The Beaver comparison (Image vs. Eureka) will give you some idea of the dramatic improvement in picture quality you can expect.

[denti alligator]

Don't forget that Kino will likely replace the original German intertitles with English ones.